Episode 3.5
Synopsis The team are faced with a highly unusual and dangerous threat from the future: a deadly flesh-eating fungus. When a transient anomaly opens, an unfortunate assistant accidentally wanders through to a hot damp world. He breathes in some spores which he then transfers to our world. These spores belong to an incredibly aggressive, fast-growing fungus that first invades and kills its human hosts before reanimating their bodies to seek out new hosts. When all solutions (including heat, water and bullets) fail to destroy the creature, the team must deal with the possibility that the fungus will spread through the whole country, absorbing everyone it encounters and becoming bigger and more dangerous all the time. Plot Lloyd, the assistant of London businessman, Sir Richard Bentley, was waiting in his boss's flat, waiting to collect some paperwork when he sees an Anomaly. Unaware of what it is, believing it to be a piece of modern art, he goes through it, finding himself in a Future woodland, overlooked by cliffs. As Lloyd explores, he comes into contact with a strange fungus, which spurts a cloud of spores into his face, leaving him dangerously ill. He returns to the flat, but the anomaly seals shut on him, though not before he vomits several spores into the flat. When Sir Richard returns to his flat to collect the paperwork, he comes into contact with the spores and rapidly begins to succumb to an unknown infection. Back at the ARC, Connor is being forced to live in his office, having moved out of Abby's flat, accompanied by the two Diictodon (who Connor has named Sid and Nancy). An intruder is detected in the ARC: fearing it to be Helen Cutter, Captain Becker and his soldiers prepare to shoot to kill, but the intruder merely turns out to be Danny Quinn. Danny speaks to Lester and Jenny, offering his services to the team (especially since his brother was killed by a creature), but they refuse, and decide to keep him under arrest at the ARC until they decide what to do with him. Unfortunately, after Sid the Diictodon plays havoc with the Anomaly Detection Device, and Connor gets the ADD working again, the team discover the presence of the anomaly in Sir Richard's flat and go to investigate. Before she can join them, Jenny is given Cutter's personal effects, since he has no family to pass them onto. Jenny is horrified to discover a photo of Claudia Brown, and follows after the team, extremely confused and frightened at the meaning of it. At Sir Richard's flat, the team take a sample of the spores and Connor is sent back to the ARC to analyse them. To his horror, Connor discovers the spores are from an aggressive and highly contagious fungus: he tells Jenny to quarantine the flat and find anyone who may have come into contact with the spores. Fearing that Sir Richard has, and on discovering that he is heading to catch a train at St Pancras station, the team goes after him: however, Bentley evades Abby, Jenny and Becker at the station, before escaping into underground tunnels, where he completely succumbs to the infection, becoming a strange humanoid fungus creature. Back at the ARC, the team have an unwelcome guest: Christine Johnson, accompanied by her associates, Captain Wilder and Mark Baker have arrived. Johnson takes Lester aside in private, where she insists that Lester take on Wilder as Cutter's replacement, and asks whether he has found the artifact left by Helen in Episode 3.3: however, Lester refuses to give into her demands. Meanwhile, Danny (who has been working with Sarah Page on the artifact in a lab) sees Baker skulking round the ARC. Baker breaks into Connor's lab and touches the fungus, rapidly succumbing to the infection. The lab is quarantined and Connor and Danny, clad in hazmat suits, go in to assess the damage. Johnson furiously accuses Lester of her's man's death (though Lester coldly retorts he shouldn't have been trespassing) and storms out, remarking to Wilder on the way out she wants the ARC under complete surveillance. Unfortunately, the team now have to contain the infected Baker, who like Bentley, has transformed into a fungus creature (Lester dryly comments "This'll be difficult to explain to the next of kin: good news-he's not technically dead. Bad news- he's turned into a mushroom!"). The team seal the creature in the contaminated lab and, at Sarah's suggestion, try exposing it to extreme heat in the hope of killing it. The plan seems to work when the creature explodes in the extreme heat, and Danny is dispatched with a number of flamethrowers to Jenny, Abby and Becker, who are trying to contain Bentley in the tunnels. However, when Connor goes back into the lab to rescue Sid, he discovers that heat only destroys the fungus's body, but causes the spores to spread more virulently. Sarah manages to get this information to Jenny before the team uses the flamethrowers on the creature. Connor discovers that cold stops the spread of the fungus and tells Sarah to turn down the lab's temperature to as low as she can, ignoring the risk of himself freezing to death. After the temperature reaches -250 degrees, the fungus is destroyed and the team rescue Connor from the lab. The team then decide to use the cold to kill Bentley. Jenny and Danny manage to lure Bentley to the surface and trap him in a security van. They then transport him to the ARC where, in the operation room, Connor has lowered the temperature to below zero, allowing them to kill Bentley once he enters the room. However, Bentley escapes into the ARC, and while Lester evacuates the rest of the staff, Jenny, Abby, Sarah and Danny go to find CO2 fire extinguishers to lure Bentley into the Operations room. However, Jenny is trapped in the operation room by Bentley who, being slowly killed by the cold, is focusing on the only source of heat in the room: Jenny's body. After holding Bentley off for a few moments, Jenny succumbs to the cold. With Bentley seconds from killing Jenny, Danny runs into the room and attacks him. As the creature turns on Danny, it finally succumbs to the cold and dies. The team rush to Jenny's aid, only to find she's been infected: although she's dying, the team cannot remove her until the cold has killed the infection. Once the fungus is dead, the team remove Jenny from the operation room and resucitate her. In the wake of the incident, the ARC is cleared up. Lester and the team, impressed by Danny's skills, resourcefulness and ability to lead, appoints him Cutter's replacement as team leader, in front of a scowling Christine Johnson, who had continued to insist on Captain Wilder (though she congratulates him, the two exchange a cold glare). Jenny, upset and traumatised over her near-death experience and all the other tragedies that have occurred, resigns from the ARC. Though Danny tries to convince her to stay, Jenny says that she doesn't have a place on the team now, and that she wants to try for a life where she can "just forget the ARC, the creatures, the anomalies and above all, forget about Nick Cutter and Claudia Brown!". Jenny wishes Danny luck, and leaves, but not before Danny comments she'll never be able to forget what she has seen working with the ARC. Jenny talks one last, mournful look around the ARC before she leaves. Lester, discovering Connor is now living in the ARC, offers him a place to stay at a house in London he owns as a temporary measure until Connor finds somewhere else to live. Cast * Danny Quinn - Jason Flemyng * Connor Temple — Andrew-Lee Potts * Abby Maitland — Hannah Spearritt * Jenny Lewis — Lucy Brown (Last appearence) * James Lester — Ben Miller * Captain Becker - Ben Mansfield * Sarah Page - Laila Rouass * Christine Johnson - Belinda Stewart-Wilson * Captain Wilder - Alex McSweeney * Sir Richard Bentley - William Scott-Masson Rating Errors *We never find out what happens to the member of Becker's team who gets attacked by the fungus creature - since they didn't know about freezing at that point, one would expect him to turn into a new fungus creature. *When Sarah tries to tell Danny and Connor about the Fungus Creature behind them she has to use the intercom but when Connor tries to tell her about lowering the tempature he just shouts through the glass. **''Maybe the intercom was still turned on from when Sarah used it.'' Editing * http://www.fernsehserien.de/index.php?serie=10755&seite=12&staffel=3#e127849 (Paragraph "18 : Der Pilz") 3.05, Episode